Genevieve finished reading, and wiped a tear off her cheek. She put the journal on her bedside table, and hugged Gwen.
“You’re right, it is pretty scary. It’s like Ethan thought there was someone else inside him, and that’s pretty creepy…” She stopped suddenly, a thought occurring to her with the sudden clarity of a dark object illuminated by a sudden burst of lightning in a storm. It was a thought that had been tantalizing her since the mountain, but it had always stayed in the darkness. Now she had caught a glimpse of it, and she thought she knew how to see more.
“Gwen, hand me my bag.” She said. Gwendolyn reached down and grabbed her duffel from the floor at the side of the bed, and hauled it up. Evie rifled through it and pulled out a pair of denim shorts with a triumphant grin.
She reached into the pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“What is that?” Gwen asked.
“I’m not sure, but I think I have an idea that it might prove something.” Evie unfolded the paper and compared it to Ethan’s journal. She placed the short note directly overtop of the journal page, and compared the handwriting.
Dear Everybody,
Hope and I have gone to talk. This conversation has been a long time in coming, so I hope you’ll understand if it takes awhile. Be back as soon as I can.
I don’t know if I can win this fight, and that frightens me, but I have to try.
There was a difference, she was sure of it.
“Gwen, do you see a difference?” She asked. “Is the writing the same?”
“It’s similar.” Her little sister said. “But something’s wrong with that note.”
“That’s what I think.” Genevieve continued to look at it.
She picked up the journal, keeping the note on top, and looked closely.
“See the I’s?” She asked. “The way he writes them, they’re slanted differently. The note is angled more towards the right.”
They both peered closely at the writing, and Eve was more and more sure of it as she looked. The note said “I can” at the end, and the journal said “I can” as well, but the note was slanted. She was positive.
“It’s almost like he was writing it at an angle.” She said. Gwen looked at her with a funny expression on her face. Like what Eve just said had sparked a memory.
“I have a friend at school that does that.” Gwen said. “Her name’s Michelle, she holds the paper funny so she can write with her left hand.”
“What?” Evie asked, looking away from the paper to her little sister. She’d had another one of those lightning flashes of comprehension, and she wanted to see if she could glimpse just a little more of the idea that was beginning to dawn on her.
“She’s left-handed, so she moves the paper so she can see what she’s writing a little better. See, her hand gets in the way so she can’t see everything she’s writing…” Gwen was explaining, but Eve’s face lit up with understanding.
She could see it all now.
On the mountain Ethan had helped Neal up, and that gesture bothered her. She hadn’t known why, but now she realized that he had used his left hand to do it. Ethan was right-handed.
Once she had seen him salute the limo driver, and it had disturbed her even though it was familiar. And then she remembered how, as kids, Ethan had offered the same salute to her every morning and every night when they were both in the bathroom to brush their teeth. He did it with his right hand, but in the mirror it looked like his left. He had saluted the driver in the same way with his left hand, and that’s why it seemed familiar and yet strange, because he always used his right. It only looked like the left when it was reflected.
“He’s left-handed.” She whispered aloud. Gwen stared at her as if she were stupid.
“Ethan’s right-handed.” She said, looking up at her big sister with her hands on her hips in mock-exasperation, as if to say that she didn’t know what she would do with all these big people that ran the world yet could sometimes seem so dumb.
“You’re right. Ethan is. That’s what scares me.” She remembered what he’d written, the words now leaping into her mind – the other, the dark one, the tiger… And she shivered despite the summer sun rising outside her window.
No Man an Island 
8 comments
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December 24, 2007 at 8:19 am
sonjanitschke
Ok. The final review. I believe in being blunt, I hope you don’t mind.
First of all…it was an interesting concept at first. However, and this is probably due to my world view so feel free to ignore, the fact that it’s a demon or whatever making Ethan act the way he’s acting is really a lot of a let down. It feels cliche and trite in my opinion, an easy answer. When I was a Christian, I had a vague thought that demons took our thoughts and magnified them, twisted what was already there (the last four being the key words). And that’s all I’ll say about the plot because I freely admit that I am biased. I try to separate that biasim in my comments, but I am only human after all.
Regarding Story Structure: it’s very awkward to me, I think it could use some work.
Regarding Character Developement: there isn’t any. All the characters read and feel the same. I feel as if I don’t know any of them. I don’t care that Hope died, I don’t care that Ethan is being possessed by a demon. I would care if I knew them better, but I don’t. I feel as if you are keeping me at arm’s reach, not allowing me to get closer.
Your writing has a lot of telling in it, not nearly enough showing. Have you ever read Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing? I highly recommend it, as well as Stephen King’s On Writing (I don’t like Stephen King — only his Firestarter — but he makes excellent points in this book).
Those are my thoughts.
I will write a review on PU.
December 24, 2007 at 1:53 pm
nomananisland
Blunt is better than sugar-coating.
First — Ethan and the demon — the interesting thing is, the rest of this story will show exactly what you assumed about demons before, that they magnify what was already there. That humans choose, and then demons cheer on the bad behaviour to encourage it. In Ethan’s head, he tries to separate himself from the responsibility. But in the text, more and more, it will show that he can’t do that. If it’s not present already, as a concept, then I need to go back and fix it.
Story Structure — it’s awkward to me too and has been changed three times, so I need to go back to basics and figure it out.
Characters — Some of them develop much better from here, but that doesn’t help readers at the beginning. Which is why I think I need to go back to basics and possibly start over. Sigh.
Thanks for spending so much time on this, I hope some of it was worthwhile. I’m impressed you read the whole thing in such a short period of time, thanks for showing an interest.
But it confirms some of my worst fears about parts of this book, and now I have to really think about what to do next.
December 24, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Niecie
So far I love it. There are points where I feel like maybe you’re being a bit wordy… But I think that’s the part of me that also uses TIVO so I can skip the commercials, so feel free not to worry on that. I do have my personal favorite characters that I’m really loving so far, but when the secondary characters, the friends say things or give an opinion, I don’t feel I really know them enough to keep straight which one is which. With Gwen, Ethan, Genevieve, and Hope they’re lines and emotions really stick for me because they’ve had so much more in the stories. When you were telling about them as children and playing knights it really helped build a connection with all of them, but it really wasn’t enough to sustain the connection for most of the friends. I’m sure the story centers around the characters of the most importance, but it makes those moments with the secondary characters really difficult to relate to because any mention of what they’re doing is really just a line or two, a side note to the main characters. I’m not saying I wanna know their life stories or anything… but I’d like to know what they’re doing more than just basic mentions like, “the band’s in the studio recording,” it makes the friends feel more in the way for me than in the story. Aside from that I absolutely love this entire story, beginning to where it’s currently reached. Your way of writing, your style for this story really helps keep me interested and sort of engaged for lack of a better word. Keep up the good work!
December 25, 2007 at 10:19 am
nomananisland
Thanks Niecie! I’m glad you’ve connected with Ethan and his sisters. I’ve been debating with myself about the characterization of their friends: to some extent, they’re supposed to feel “in the way” as you put it.
As much as there is a reason for that, if they’re not engaging readers I still need to think about whether there’s a better way to do what I want to accomplish. Come along for the ride and let’s see what I can pull off!
December 27, 2007 at 6:53 pm
magniloquence
Hmm. I was going to say that I felt differently, but I realized that my quibble was a little more specific than that. When Hope died, I cared… but I cared because he killed her, not because she was dead. It occurred to me that she was ‘fridged‘ … she was killed to make drama for him (and for her other friends), rather than because it made sense for her. That’s not to say that it wasn’t right for her, but that the way it’s come out in the story has had that effect. She dies in order to show that he’s evil and get the group out of the house, full stop.
That said, I think part of the reason the character development is a little haphazard is because of the structure and sheer number of characters. As soon as one storyline gets underway, we’re tossed into another one with different characters at a different time, and you have to spend some of that time establishing the setting, the rules, the time period and so on. The ratio of character-development time to setting-development time is awkward at the moment, because you’re still laying it all out.
Taking the story so far as having three main branches (the angels, the kids, and Ethan-wherever-he-is), you begin to notice that none of them have really had all that much pagetime. The angel storyline has had three major characters (the girl, the angel-narrator, Mara) and a number of minor characters (other angels, the other humans, Jeremiah, etc.); the kids’ storyline has the core kids, their friends and family, Land, Evil!Ethan, and it spans at least two distinct time periods (as kids and as young adults); Lost!Ethan’s storyline mainly involves him, but also involves a lot of setting work and ties to other storylines. That’s a lot of stuff. Considering that the story is only on page 81, and that a fair amount of those 81 pages has been devoted to things that really don’t involve the characters (or, at least, their development) much at all – the Origin stuff, the desert setting, some of the allegories and celestial beuracracy, not to mention stories and some of the journal entries – … you’re not left with much space for anything to be significantly developed right now.
So I don’t mind that it seems kind of sketchy at the moment, since it’s clear that at least right now, it’s more a structural problem than a writing problem. That said, I do think it’s something you’re going to need to look at in the near future. It’s easier for us to react to things that happen when we’ve been with the characters for a while… not just in general, but in the pages immediately preceding the action.
December 27, 2007 at 8:48 pm
nomananisland
Thank you magniloquence. That was extremely well thought out and helpful. I’ve spent the past few days absorbing comments and reflecting on the text, and I think the biggest problem is balancing characters and structure, which was difficult when I conceived of this as a novel.
Now that I’m serializing this on the web, I think I can slow down so that characterization becomes clearer. I think a web-serial format suits the concept better, and liberates it from the confines of the novel conventions enforced by print.
In essence, the plan is to continue to post new chapters, and revise old ones to make them more character-driven. Events will stay the same, but hopefully connecting to the cast will be easier and more fulfilling. Stay tuned!
March 11, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Allan T Michaels
Ahhh – the classic definition of left handed – the sinister. It’s a nice twist. I also like how you connect it back to Eve’s random uneasy feelings that occur earlier in the story.
March 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm
nomananisland
Little details like that are a major part of the layers of the story. Everything connects, sooner or later. Thanks for noticing!